St. Dominic-Jackson Hospital Deploys CA's Unicenter TNG

Computer Associates International Inc (CA), one of the world's leading eBusiness solutions providers, announced that St. Dominic-Jackson Memorial Hospital (St. Dominic) is deploying CA's Unicenter TNG to oversee its enterprise IT operations. CA Services is assisting with the implementation of the software.

The Jackson, Miss.-based hospital is a 571-bed, 2,100 employee facility that was ranked one of the top 100 "most wired" hospitals in the country in both 1999 and 2000 by Hospitals and Health Networks magazine. The facility relies on its sophisticated infrastructure of network application platforms to deliver vital patient data when and where it is needed.

Maximizing system uptime is a primary goal for the hospital. Its complex environment makes this feat even more challenging. The facility's technological infrastructure consists of a tremendous number of applications ? from patient charts to safety manuals. "High availability of all our systems is critical," said Keith Van Camp, St. Dominic, vice president of information services. "We're making clinical patient decisions every minute. If a system goes down, it could compromise patient care."

The hospital staff uses technology to help improve overall hospital efficiency and deliver the most comprehensive patient care available. Therefore, the selection of the most robust and cost-effective enterprise management solution was critical. St. Dominic investigated other enterprise management software solutions, but Unicenter TNG was chosen to perform end-to-end management of the hospital's IT resources. "I gave CA an opportunity to demonstrate how Unicenter TNG could operate in our environment," said Van Camp. "CA not only met my requirements, it exceeded them. That's what really impressed me."

To support its far-reaching medical service programs, St. Dominic built a complex heterogeneous IT environment. Unicenter TNG is organizing the hospital's extensive IT infrastructure - including an IBM AS/400, ten Risk 6000 servers, 70 NT servers, 1,000 desktops, and two DEC VAX systems. The database environment includes Oracle, Sybase, SQL and other applications.

According to Van Camp, at St. Dominic's, the bedside paper chart is obsolete. The staff now records patients' vital signs at a bedside computer that makes the information immediately available to other physicians throughout the hospital via databases. Physicians can access this and other information, through a remote Web browser, monitored by Unicenter TNG. "We're very automated in this hospital and we're trying to advance with automation without hiring a lot of additional people," noted Van Camp. "That's where Unicenter TNG comes into play."

Unicenter TNG is already yielding a return on investment. In its first week of operation, the Asset Management Option (AMO) of Unicenter TNG alerted St. Dominic's IT staff to two servers that were about to go down because of bad file structures. The staff took actions that kept the servers online. St. Dominic's IT technicians were able to head off that problem with the help of CA Services, which is implementing software. "CA Services came through for us," said Van Camp. "I had some pretty strict requirements and CA Services surpassed all of them."

Van Camp is also impressed with the Advanced Help Desk (AHD) and Remote Control Option (RCO) of Unicenter TNG, which will boost his IT staff's troubleshooting capabilities. AHD will route the help desk call to a technician who will be able to control the device in question and troubleshoot it without making an onsite visit. RCO is enabling Van Camp's staff to assume control over one or more desktops and servers from any remote location.

The Software Delivery Option (SDO) of Unicenter TNG is reducing system ownership for the hospital, by allowing technicians to install software throughout the enterprise from a central location. Previously, loading new software releases onto every desktop was a job that took months of internal staff time, required outsourcing and caused compatibility problems between different software versions.

The Single Sign On (SSO) option of Unicenter TNG will allow access to multiple systems through one password and ID structure. It will also help enhance system security by streamlining the process of removing access points for former St. Dominic's employees. "One of the modules that is very important to us is the Single Sign On option," said Van Camp. "We employ different kinds of systems, so we had the age-old problem of different passwords and user ID structures for different systems. There are some people that have to get onto six or seven different systems."

In addition to simplifying access management, SSO will help the health care facility comply with federal privacy regulations by enabling staff to manage audit trails that record access to a patient's medical records. "The Single Sign On option of Unicenter TNG will really help us in many different areas," said Van Camp.

Computer Associates International Inc, one of the world's leading business software companies, delivers the end-to-end infrastructure to enable eBusiness through innovative technology, services and education. CA has 20,000 employees worldwide and had revenue in excess of $6 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2000. For more information, visit www.ca.com.

CA Services delivers eBusiness solutions that are empowered by CA technology and focused on clients' business outcomes. Leveraging a vast resource of best practices and technology accelerators such as Express Delivery, Express Maintenance and Neugents, CA Services enables organizations to achieve competitive advantage in eBusiness, enterprise management, application solutions, knowledge management, security, business assessments and visualization, and other key strategic solution areas. For more information, please visit www.ca.com/services.

As a subsidiary of St. Dominic Health Services, St. Dominic-Jackson Memorial Hospital is a 571-bed not-for-profit acute care hospital owned and operated by the Dominican Sisters of Springfield, Illinois. Located in Jackson, Mississippi, St. Dominic was established in 1946. For more information, visit www.stdom.com.

Contact Catherine Shull of Computer Associates, 631-342-6510, catherine.shull@ca.com.